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Well hi and welcome to the famous Computer
Cafe. This is Ellen Walker. And I'm

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Andy Velkoff and we're here to talk about
personal computers and the world of

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technology. And today we have Steven
Levy who is the author of a great book

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called Hackers. I want to tell you this
is a great book. It's interesting and

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fascinating and Andy took it away from me
and I'll never forgive him for it. And

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I'm not giving it back until I'm finished.
It's a terrific book. It reads like a

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history of who,
who from the hackers who started this

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whole industry. It's fascinating.

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So we're going to have a great show.
So stay tuned. We'll be back after this

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message and you'll hear from
Steven Levy who wrote Hackers.

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compare different documents simultaneously
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document all in one display.

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Get the word. Word is available at Software
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Well hi, this is Andy Velkoff and we're
here at the famous Computer Cafe and with

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us is a very special guest. Steven Levy
who is of course the author of Hackers,

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one of the major publications and major
books in the area of personal computing

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in terms of the background and the people
who really brought this industry into

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the fold. Steve, welcome to the cafe.
Thanks Andy. Pleasure to be here. Now you,

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there's so many questions I have for you.
I'm not sure where to begin but I'll

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just start at the beginning. How did you
get involved in computers and high tech?

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What attracted you to it?
I was a writer who had very little interest in

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technology and someone suggested that
I do a story about these people called

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hackers. This was in 1981 and I knew
that computers were some kind of coming

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thing and I thought maybe I should get
interested in it and I began to look into

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it and was absolutely fascinated by not
only the people who spent all their time

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on computers and did amazing things with
them but also the whole surrounding

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world of technology is interesting because
at the time a woman I lived with and I

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had been wondering whether
to get word processors.

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She's a writer too and I had a real aversion
to the idea of having those screens

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in my house but as soon as I saw these
hackers in a way they loved their machines

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I said okay let's do it let's get the
computers and within a couple weeks we were

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totally wired into the electronic cottage age.

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When you first got your computer what were
you getting into? I mean spreadsheets

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or word processing or games or what?
Well word processing was the main reason but

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characteristically and I think this points
to an interesting gender reaction to

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computers. I started picking up games and
all kinds of strange things and began

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to experiment where she pretty much stuck
to the word processing and approached

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computers in a much more practical manner
than I did. Well that's an interesting

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point. I hear statistics that the ratio
of male users to female users that

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is computer users is something like three
to one. I don't know if that's accurate

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but my personal experience tells me that
more men and use computers than women

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do. What do you think that is caused by?
I'm not sure if the question is male

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users compared to female users but I
found when I was doing hackers is that I

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really had a very tough time finding any
female hackers and I'm talking about

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people who purely computed just for
the ride of computing in a test pilot

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sort of approach and some
hackers told me that they

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don't know why it is but women often will
not approach computers with that same

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spirit of adventure. In a sense I think
they're more pragmatic towards computers

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that can be very good in programming them
but they don't like the idea of sitting

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for hours and hours and hours and hours
just to get something neat occurring from

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them. One hacker told me you know I think
it's a hardware problem. Was he talking

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about the computers or the people?
I won't let you answer that. Now in terms of

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the book it's a rather substantial book.
I mean there are a lot of folks in the

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industry who've written articles and I
know you have a couple of columns. You

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write for Rolling Stone, you write for
Popular Computing but this is more than

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just putting a couple of articles together.

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This is a major work of pretty good size.
You talk about a lot of people. As a

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matter of fact you have almost an index
of who's who at the beginning. How

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did you go about researching the book?

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You're right. The reason why we did the
who's who is because it is sort of like a

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Russian novel where you have these
characters some of whom reappear. Others you

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might want to turn to the front of the
book to remind yourself who is this guy.

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When I started my editor gave me this
mandate that I want something to keep the

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reader going on. Originally I wasn't
going to do the section about the MIT

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hackers, the very early ones. But as I
started researching it and I guess I first

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started with the home brew people in the
Silicon Valley from which the Apple and

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all that stuff came from. I realized the
importance of the very first hackers at

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MIT who were very much akin to those test
pilots that were the predecessors of

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the astronauts and I kept
gravitating towards them.

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What was interesting is that when they
started computers were very difficult to

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use. They were room size. You almost had
to steal access to them and that's why

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hackers are kind of an outlaw culture
because originally everything they did was

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unauthorized. I felt an epic sweep taking
on as I did it. I mean it started off

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with these giant computers that filled
rooms and these people were doing

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something totally alien to the great
majority of the population and wound up with

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teenagers using computers in their bedroom
which really weren't that much less

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powerful. So we really had something I
mean it almost sounds as though you're

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talking about the right stuff.
I mean going back to the Air Force bases in

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California and these guys in the very
early days looking at early computers as a

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matter of fact I think as the book starts
you're talking about people who were

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into model railroad clubs and talking
about track switching and whatnot as early

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switching devices. Right a lot of the
style of hackerism comes across from the

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electronics background that some of the
people who first got into it and for

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people who are into electronics which
again is a very logical system. Computers

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are the greatest thing in the world.
What it is is a logical system is taken

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without limits. So when these guys who
were the kinds of guys that grew up

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fiddling around with erector sets and
shorting the electricity in the house by

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sticking paperclips into the plugs and the
people who in the I guess late 40s and

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early 50s learned how to do tricks with
the telephone and when they were exposed

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to something like a computer which they
usually stumbled upon and stayed there

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until they were thrown out of the computer
room that was the greatest thing in

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the world to them. They couldn't believe
that this thing existed and they went

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about doing things with computers that
no one had thought you could do with

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computers. Okay well we're gonna take a
break right now when we come back Steve I

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like to talk about who are some of these
people. I mean there's some names that

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we know but maybe there was some that
that most of us hadn't heard of and these

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people who are influential in the development
of personal computing. You're here

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at the famous computer cafe we're talking
with Steve Levy who is the author of

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Hackers. This is Andy Velkoff we'll
be right back after this. Stay tuned.

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Angeles a SoftSill dealer.
Well hi we're back this is

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00:12:02,001 --> 00:12:06,000
Andy Velkoff and we're here at the famous
Computer Cafe talking with Steve Levy

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the author of Hackers. Talking about the
batch mentality you have a section in

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the book where you talk about the experience
of the early programmers who would

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deliver their cards to the people who were
using the computers I guess at MIT and

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it seems like a religious ritualistic
right where these people would deliver the

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cards as if it were a sacrifice and so
the prey that they would get an answer

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that things wouldn't screw up and that the
computer would do what it was supposed

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to do. Right well whereas it was a
religious right it was certainly hollow

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because there was no spirit behind it.
One programmer on Hacker at MIT

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was in a panic because he had signed
up for a loan which required him

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to join the Navy after he graduated
from MIT and he did anything he could

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to get out of it because he knew that in
his program he was at the Navy he would

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use this batch process univac computer in
a room so stifling that you would never

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get to actually see the computer run and
one person who had been submitting these

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cards for a year one woman my story went
finally got to see her program run on

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the computer and she saw all the lights
and all the tapes whirling and it was so

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exciting that she fainted and this person
said there is no way I'm going to work

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on a computer room like this I cannot live
without my PDP-6 at MIT so he got out

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of it. There's something I mean I think
we all love people once in a while who

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have such righteous and passionate feelings
about their intelligence and about

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their sense of creativity who are some
of the other people who were involved in

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the early hacking days? Well the fellow
I just mentioned was a fellow named Bill

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Gosper and he was a fellow who liked
to do mathematical explorations on the

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computer and he would sit around the
console this PDP-6 this mainframe computer

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which at that time wasn't time shared
and meaning he had total control of this

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computer and people would gather around
him he would be like Horowitz at the

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piano keyboard and they'd watch him do
amazing things and when he sometimes made

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a typing error he would see that as a
window into something interesting and he

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would take off from that the kind of Bach
improvising another fellow was named

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Richard Greenblatt and he was a fellow
who may not have believed in traditional

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personal hygiene because he would just
stay in the computer room for weeks and

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weeks and weeks but he did amazing things
with a computer and at one point one

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researcher at a think tank postulated that
a computer would never play a game of

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chess good enough to beat a ten-year-old
and Greenblatt took offense at this and

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within a week he had programmed the
computer to play a game of chess and he

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polished up the program and that game
of chess that program called MacHack

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actually beat that researcher
in a public match. That's quite

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you know my sense for for hackers and
the people in the book is that they love

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challenges they love the challenge
of dealing with the machine or of

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accomplishing something or designing something.
What

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were some of the other
people that you ran into?

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Well some of the more well-known people
are people like Steve Wozniak but I

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really delighted in finding people who
were significant whose names aren't

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household words. One group of people we
talk about during the break people who

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maybe aren't significant but were certainly
characteristic in the way a computer

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can take you over a couple named the Boxes.
Now Bob Box was a jockey he was

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a man of maybe four feet in stature
but physical stature he had a computer

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stature which was extraordinary and he
and his wife lived in this little town

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called Coorsgold, California and when a
software factory in the eighties moved in

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there they thought let's get into this
and as it turned out Carol in particular

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had a propensity for computing she said
it sounded like when she worked on the

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computer voices talked to her it was a
language which she understood all her life

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and these people who had most recently
been gold prospectors as a matter of fact

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both of them hold Guinness World Records
in panning for gold wound up writing a

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00:16:27,000 --> 00:16:33,000
best-selling educational program
for the Apple computer. Hacking can

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strike any time in life I guess.

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That's right where you could go from from
digging for gold for striking gold with

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with computers. We're going to take another
break right now and when we come back

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I'd like to talk more about
these people and also how

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do you research a book like this?

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I mean you know the book reads to me as
if you were right there and the style as

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I mentioned to you before we get on the
air it reads almost like fiction in terms

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of its flow and its pacing and everything.
I really loved it although I must

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confess I'm not finished with it yet but
how do you research and how do you get

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all the stories and how do you get
people to give you all that kind of

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information because I know it's a challenge
being in that business myself. Well

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we're at the famous computer cafe this
is Andy Velkoff and we're talking with

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Steven Levy the author of Hackers.
We'll be back right after this. Stay tuned.

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00:17:37,000 --> 00:17:41,001
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leaving D-BASE 3. You can read non-D-BASE
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Computers in Carson, a softcell dealer.

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Today I'd like to discuss Multiplan by
Microsoft. What's a Multiplan? It's a

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00:18:52,000 --> 00:18:56,001
spreadsheet program for your IBM PC or
your Macintosh. Well what do you do with a

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00:18:56,001 --> 00:19:01,000
Multiplan? Use it to make forecasts.
Oh you mean like what the weather will be?

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No more like weather or not. Oh can I join
Multiplan? No you don't join it silly.

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You use it. It's a tool designed with
non-computer people in mind to help you

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00:19:12,000 --> 00:19:13,001
manage your business and plan for the future.

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A tool? Oh you mean like a hammer?
Well if you're looking for a way to hit the

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nail on the head, use Multiplan to build
your worksheet. Enter the formulas you

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00:19:23,000 --> 00:19:27,001
normally use to do budgets or cash flow
analysis or financial planning and then

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00:19:27,001 --> 00:19:30,001
let Multiplan do the calculations
while you sit back and

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watch. Well where can I see it?

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00:19:51,001 --> 00:19:55,001
Well hi we're back. This is Andy Velkoff
and we're here at the famous Computer

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Cafe talking with Steven Levy, the author
of Hackers. Steve, the book, you know,

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00:20:01,001 --> 00:20:02,001
you talk about it. You [...] about it.
You talk about it. You talk about it. You

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00:20:02,001 --> 00:20:04,000
You talk about it. You talk about it.
You talk about a lot of different people.

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00:20:04,000 --> 00:20:08,000
You talk about experiences going back
to the 50s and really tracing it.

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00:20:09,000 --> 00:20:15,001
But it doesn't read like a dry factual
account of, well, and in this year

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such and such computer came out.

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IBM did this and then Xerox did this, etc.
It reads in a way as if you talk with

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a lot of people and you got
a lot of different stories

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00:20:27,000 --> 00:20:29,000
and you must have made a ton of notes.

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00:20:29,001 --> 00:20:32,000
What was it like and really
how did you start doing it?

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Well, it was a two-year project and
the most important thing is to win the

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00:20:40,000 --> 00:20:42,000
trust of the people you're talking to.

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Don't be in a hurry to do the interviews.
Just sit down and

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00:20:46,000 --> 00:20:47,001
talk and talk and talk and talk.

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00:20:48,000 --> 00:20:51,001
When someone tells you one version of a story,
then talk to every other person

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mentioned in the story in order to get
their side and then call back the first

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00:20:56,001 --> 00:20:59,000
person and say, well, so and so said this.

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There was one story I'm thinking of that
occurred, oh, it must have been 1962 or

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something, where some people in an
informal group at MIT called the Midnight

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Computer Wiring Society went out and made
an adjustment to the computer, which

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was totally beyond the pale.

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You picture college freshmen going into
a multi-million dollar computing and

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00:21:23,000 --> 00:21:27,001
rewiring it because they thought they
wanted to add some instructions to it.

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00:21:27,001 --> 00:21:31,000
Well, this wasn't a prank. This was something

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00:21:31,000 --> 00:21:32,001
they felt the computer could do better.

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I mean, it may not have been authorized,
but they were doing this because

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they thought it would improve the system,
right?

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Of course. They looked at the
computer and they thought it could

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benefit from these improvements.

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So as hackers quite often do,
they will not check to find out if

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they can do it. They will go ahead and do it.

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So they crept in the middle of the night,
they ripped up the computer apart, they

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rewired it,
and they ran some programs that they

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devised on it and were very happy with it.

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They didn't check to find out if it would
run one particular program on it, which

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some people who are non-hackers often use.

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And the next day, some people who were
authorized to use the computers for some

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very serious projects came in.

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And this one woman in particular was
running this very big forecasting program,

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and the computer just
absolutely almost blew up when

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she ran it. It just went dead.

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And she eventually reported this,
and some of the hackers got

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into some trouble with it.

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Well, I had heard this story from various
people, and finally I called up this

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woman, asking her about this time
that she used the computer 25

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years ago when the computer crashed.

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And she was, to put it mildly, astounded
that someone would call her about this

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incident way back in the past, but actually
she was able to recall something like

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that and actually told me some pretty
interesting things about some of the

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stranger hackers back then.

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So is that what's referred to
as the good old early days?

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Yeah, in some ways they weren't so good,
but in many ways it was a golden age for

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the hackers, because they can go anywhere.

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00:23:03,000 --> 00:23:04,001
They were working on totally untested ground.

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Well, we've talked about some people who
a lot of us had not heard about before,

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but let's get to some of the more well-known
folks, like Wozniak. What were the

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origins of that? Where did he come from?

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He came from the Silicon Valley,
born in the computer USA.

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Steve is one of those people who just
absolutely took to computing instantly.

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We had a thing called the Hacker Conference
around the time the book came out,

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where a lot of the people who were in the
book got together, and it was great to

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see because you had three generations
of hackers all getting together.

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One person compared the urge to hacking
like a baby duck, seeing something moving

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and following it,
the way a baby duck is infinite on his mother.

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Steve was one of those people he was
sending away for computer catalogs when

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he was still in junior high school.

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He and one of his friends,
who I had a couple of good interviews with,

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decided they would design their own computer.

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00:24:05,000 --> 00:24:11,000
They did various computers,
the soda pop computer and all kinds of things,

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00:24:12,000 --> 00:24:15,001
until one of the computers he eventually
designed, when he was a little farther

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00:24:15,001 --> 00:24:18,000
along, turned out to be the Apple.

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00:24:19,000 --> 00:24:22,000
Wow, and that was the beginnings of Apple then?

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00:24:22,001 --> 00:24:27,000
Well, the beginnings of Apple literally
was Steve Wozniak designing a board

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00:24:27,000 --> 00:24:32,001
called the Apple One, and Steve Jobs helping
him stuff the chips on the board and

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00:24:32,001 --> 00:24:36,000
getting computer stores to buy this thing.

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And then, of course, we had things
like you talk about Homebrew in the

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book. Tell us a little bit about Homebrew.

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00:24:45,000 --> 00:24:52,000
The Homebrew Computer Club was a meeting of,
I guess it was biweekly at that

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00:24:52,000 --> 00:24:56,001
point, in the Silicon Valley, of people
who had the bizarre idea that they wanted

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00:24:56,001 --> 00:24:58,000
to build their own computers.

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00:24:59,001 --> 00:25:01,001
When was this, in terms of timing?

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00:25:01,001 --> 00:25:06,000
This was in the mid-70s. There was one
kit that you could buy, and it was a

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00:25:06,000 --> 00:25:11,000
pretty revolutionary thing called the Altair,
but it didn't do anything. So

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00:25:11,000 --> 00:25:15,001
almost out of necessity, these people had
to band together to figure out all the

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00:25:15,001 --> 00:25:20,000
weird problems that would spring up when
you built your own computer, either from

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00:25:20,000 --> 00:25:23,001
these kits or from various parts,
and they would congregate in the various

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00:25:23,001 --> 00:25:27,000
electronic junk shops of
the Silicon Valley and swap

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00:25:27,000 --> 00:25:29,000
information about this chip or that.

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00:25:29,000 --> 00:25:32,000
A lot of the information was kind of
proprietary information from some of the

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00:25:32,000 --> 00:25:38,000
companies they might have worked for at
the side, and they really weren't very

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00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:44,000
respectful of some of the intellectual
property rights of other people, because

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00:25:44,000 --> 00:25:47,000
they believed it was more
important to get the information

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00:25:47,000 --> 00:25:48,001
in order to get these computers running.

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00:25:48,001 --> 00:25:53,001
And a lot of companies, besides Apple,
also sprung from this Homebrew club, which

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00:25:53,001 --> 00:25:56,001
was moderated by a fellow named Lee
Felsenstein, who later designed the Osborne,

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00:25:57,001 --> 00:25:59,001
and that really turned out to be the beginnings

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00:25:59,001 --> 00:26:01,000
of the personal computer industry.

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00:26:02,000 --> 00:26:06,001
And it set a kind of irreverent style for
the personal computer industry, which

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00:26:06,001 --> 00:26:11,001
is held on almost until now,
but it's kind of going away now.

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00:26:13,000 --> 00:26:17,000
And then, do these groups still exist? I mean,

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00:26:17,001 --> 00:26:19,000
is there still such a thing as a Homebrew?

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00:26:19,001 --> 00:26:23,001
There still is the Homebrew, but it's much
different. You don't need that kind of

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00:26:23,001 --> 00:26:27,000
help now when you're using a home computer.

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00:26:27,001 --> 00:26:30,001
First of all, you don't have to build them.
They buy them ready-made.

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00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:35,001
Second of all, there's a lot of support,
either in any number of computer books

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00:26:35,001 --> 00:26:41,001
or users groups, which are probably the
inheritor of that kind of mantle. A lot

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00:26:41,001 --> 00:26:45,000
of people find a lot of good information
about how to use their computers from

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00:26:45,000 --> 00:26:48,001
joining a local users group, and you
still get a little bit of that democratic

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00:26:48,001 --> 00:26:50,000
spirit from some of these users groups.

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00:26:52,001 --> 00:26:57,001
Okay. Well, you know, I see the time is
getting a little bit late, and there's

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00:26:57,001 --> 00:26:59,001
still loads of things I'd love to ask you.

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00:26:59,001 --> 00:27:02,001
Do you think you might be able to come
back tomorrow with us here at the cafe, so

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00:27:02,001 --> 00:27:04,001
we can pick up where we leave off?

347
00:27:04,001 --> 00:27:07,001
Sure. You know, you'll put a hotel room aside

348
00:27:07,001 --> 00:27:09,000
for me, and I'll hang around until tomorrow,
all right?

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00:27:09,000 --> 00:27:12,000
Well, we'll put you up at the
famous computer hotel. How's that?

350
00:27:12,001 --> 00:27:14,000
Fine. Fine. Terminal's in every room.

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00:27:14,001 --> 00:27:19,000
Absolutely. Absolutely. We're here at
the famous computer cafe. This is Andy

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00:27:19,000 --> 00:27:23,001
Velkoff, and we've been talking with Steven
Levy about hackers, about hackers in

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00:27:23,001 --> 00:27:26,000
general,
and about his book of the same name, which

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00:27:26,000 --> 00:27:27,001
is published on what, Doubleday?

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00:27:28,000 --> 00:27:28,001
Doubleday Anchor Press.

356
00:27:28,001 --> 00:27:35,000
And the book is available in hardcover,
and is that true?

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00:27:36,000 --> 00:27:36,000
Yes.

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00:27:37,000 --> 00:27:40,000
Okay. So you can pick it up at your
local bookstores. It's a terrific book.

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00:27:40,001 --> 00:27:43,001
Steve's going to be back tomorrow,
and we'll talk more about hackers and then

360
00:27:43,001 --> 00:27:45,000
some other things I'd like to ask him.

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00:27:45,001 --> 00:27:48,001
So stay tuned.
We have a couple more things coming up

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00:27:48,001 --> 00:27:50,000
after this message. Stay tuned.

363
00:28:08,000 --> 00:28:13,000
SuperCalc 3 by Sorsum is a spreadsheet
that's extremely easy to use, swift, and

364
00:28:13,000 --> 00:28:17,000
powerful, and it's priced lower than
most other leading spreadsheet programs.

365
00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:21,001
SuperCalc 3 has all the built-in
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366
00:28:21,001 --> 00:28:23,000
spreadsheet, and a lot more.

367
00:28:24,000 --> 00:28:28,000
SuperCalc 3's features include an
on-screen help function, spreadsheet

368
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consolidation, and sorting capability,